


somebody catch my breath (don't let me be gone)

by KelseyO



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, Post 3x07, but i also don't usually use all lowercase, i don't usually write stuff this short, i honestly have no idea if i'll ever be able to write this pairing again, only tagging it as major character death because this fic acknowledges canon, this is a Let's Survive the Rest of the Week ficlet, this is just me puking out death feelings aight, we'll see how the rest of the season plays out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 18:59:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6163309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KelseyO/pseuds/KelseyO
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>they say there's a before, and there's an after.</p>
<p>(people die when you’re in charge, bellamy said, but clarke disagrees. she doesn’t have to be in charge to lose someone; she just has to be there.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	somebody catch my breath (don't let me be gone)

**Author's Note:**

> title from "goner" by twenty one pilots. highly suggested listening.

they say there’s a before, and there’s an after.

clarke knows the before. she knows the war paint and the piercing eyes behind it, knows the voice that’s harsh and demanding of respect unless it’s soft and begging for some intimate truth, knows the same fingers that grip the hilts of swords on a daily basis also sometimes find themselves in her hair, pulling her closer, offering a different kind of protection, of urgency.

if there’s an after, clarke doesn’t know it, can’t find it, can’t feel it, can’t feel anything, even though she knows her knees are against the hard stone floor and her hands are sticky with blood, and instead of bright crimson it’s the darkest ink, and she can’t decide if that makes it better or worse.

( _ that’s why I— _ )

she’s already having trouble remembering, differentiating. there was pressure and hot breath and salt on her tongue from lexa’s tears, but then the exhales stop and the lips against hers are too still; there’s her fingertips reading the story told in lexa’s tattoos, but then the skin splits open beneath the scalpel as Titus removes what he tells her is the commander’s spirit and puts it into a box and then takes her  _ away _ , and it doesn’t even hit her how not-alive lexa is until she sees her limp body in titus’s arms.

before, before, before, before. she hasn’t even had time to think about the way lexa’s bedsheets seemed to melt around them, or how the needy touches against her skin made her feel more human than she has in several lifetimes, or how easily the first  _ I love you  _ slipped into the open air and how quickly an  _ ai hod yu in  _ followed and how many times they alternated between each language, because she does,  _ em does _ ,  _ emo do _ .

but all of that is like a photograph held to a flame, charred edges creeping in until all that’s left is a handful of ashes, her palms covered in something that once indicated life.

“clarke,” she hears somewhere behind her, and she loathes that the voice isn’t lexa’s and that it  will never again be lexa’s, but she’s relieved they didn’t call her  _ wanheda _ —a title that now makes her insides splinter, that can’t belong to her anymore, because if she were truly the commander of death, she could have told it to spare lexa.

( _ you will never again attempt to hurt clarke. _ )

she should’ve been able to get the bullet out, should’ve been able to stop the bleeding and stitch her up and keep her breathing and safe and alive. but instead she watched her die from a wound that should have been her own, just like she watched finn bleed out for what he did to an innocent village in her name, and just like she watched hundreds of mountain men burn alive in their own skin because her plan hadn’t been good enough to win the war.

_ people die when you’re in charge _ , bellamy said, but clarke disagrees. she doesn’t have to be in charge to lose someone; she just has to be  _ there _ .

∞

(she walks back to arkadia just as numbly as she walked away from it.)


End file.
